Category: Digital (Green DiSC)
Level: Bronze
Author: Loïc Lannelongue, Anica Araneta, Green DiSC
The Impact: <p>This helps monitor the equipment the team owns already, ensure that none gets forgotten about, and will later on enable assessment of the hardware's environmental impact (e.g. manufacturing and end-of-life treatment).</p>
Details
There is a list of the different computing hardware owned by the RCI team in the office, whether or not it is currently in use, as well as suppliers and warranty policies that apply. This list is updated yearly and includes laptops, desktop computers, monitors, tablets, external hard drives, and testing equipment (if any). This does not include server rooms hardware, which is a separate criteria.
Why? Embodied carbon, or the emissions associated with the manufacturing, transportation, installation, maintenance, and end-of-life stages of a product, can take up a significant portion of emissions for equipment. For desktops and laptops, manufacturing takes up about 80% of the total life cycle emissions of the product – greatly outweighing the environmental impacts of the usage phase.
How?
List the hardware owned by the group by linking with colleagues. Where data is missing, this should be clearly highlighted so that it can be revisited in the future. In the case where a personal device is used significantly for work (e.g. using your own laptop), then this may be included for monitoring purposes. Unused equipment (e.g. spare or unusable equipment or parts) should also be listed and identified as such. Include information on actions to be taken for each, and information on how to interact with asset management systems, if available.
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